HAWTHORN will give captain Luke Hodge until the last minute to prove his fitness ahead of Friday night's clash with Melbourne at the MCG.

Hodge pulled up sore from last week's 35-point win over St Kilda after receiving some heavy knocks during the match.

While the 2008 Norm Smith medallist didn't take part in Thursday morning's training session at Waverley, coach Alastair Clarkson said Hodge had trained earlier alongside defender Josh Gibson.

Clarkson said his captain was likely to be named in the team, but would be "touch and go" to take his place.

"'Hodgey' is a bit sore, but he's still a chance to play," Clarkson said before training.

"We'll probably select him in the side tonight … [but] we won't be taking a risk.

"Given it's only a six-day break, he can still recover a fair bit in terms of his rehab.

"If he had to play right now, he'd be in a fair bit of strife I'd reckon, but who knows if he recovers well over the next 24 hours."

Gibson, who is still battling to recover from a rolled ankle sustained in the round five loss to the Sydney Swans, is considered borderline to play, leaving the Hawks facing the prospect of taking an undersized defence into the match.

Fellow key defender Jarrad Boumann had his appendix removed on Monday and will be unavailable for the next two to three weeks.

"We've had some adversity with our back end, so we've had plenty of experience of being able to cover some gaps over the last two to three years. We'll probably have to do that again tomorrow night," Clarkson said.

"They'll probably be a little bit taller than us down there, but hopefully we've got some sort of advantage in terms of rebound out of our backline, if we can just get it to the ground.

"That's going to be an intriguing contest in itself.

"If we can do it well, it'll give us a great chance of winning, but if they're on top in that area of the game, it will give Melbourne a chance of being able to put a score on the board."

Clarkson said Hawthorn would need to be at its best to defeat the winless Demons, who he believed had shown improvement over the past three weeks.

"We've just got to get back to playing the type of footy [we want to]," Clarkson said.

"We started to do that last week; we were a little bit better against the Saints, but there's still some work in progress.

"We think we can still play a lot better as a side, and hopefully we'll be able to put some of those things in practice against the Demons tomorrow night."

Mark Macgugan covers Hawks news for AFL.com.au and hawthornfc.com.au. Twitter: @AFL_MarkM.